Soccer Quiz 2006

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Soccer Quiz 2006 must simply adore Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. How else would you explain the fact the gameplay in the former takes not so much a leaf out of the hugely popular game show's book, but practically rips the spine out of the whole thing? Honestly, it's identical – you're asked a question, given the choice of four answers and even the option to resort to one of three 'Jokers' should you be struggling.

As in WWTBAM, the Jokers can be called up at any time and offer you the option of a 50/50 (which removes two incorrect answers), Survey (displays the answer the 'audience' went with), and Calling (which has you phoning an imaginary friend). It's all very familiar, but the obvious advantage is that it's a formula that has proven itself to work brilliantly.

As you might expect, the questions vary greatly. There are the simple ones that everyone should know ('Who won the World Cup in 1966?') to the moderately difficult ('Who were the first team to win a World Cup Final by a penalty shoot out?') to the mind bogglingly impossible ('Which player was named European Player Of The Year in 2003?').

Anyone looking to purchase Soccer Quiz 2006 is more than likely to have an interest in The Beautiful Game, of course. But if that is you, it's worth realising that even though you may frequent the terraces of your favourite team on a regular basis and have heated debates with mates about the England team selection, you'll still need a spot of luck to get a decent high score (we made it to 1,500, but that wasn't without a lucky guess here and there).

And that's down to sloppy game structure. As in WWTBAM, you'd expect the questions to begin brain numbingly easy and subsequently increase in difficulty but here things often appear to be completely random. The game is as likely to start with something that could see you knocked out in the first round as it is to offer easy opening fodder.

But then they do say that questions are only easy if you know the answer, right?

In fairness, the majority of the questions can be answered by fans with only the smallest amount of football knowledge, while all but the sport's obsessives are likely to have run out of Jokers by the time they get to 15th and final question.

The 15 are taken from a total of 400, which may sound like a fair amount but isn't, really – you'll be surprised how quickly they repeat. Also regular is the terrible grammar, with spelling mistakes and suspect punctuation often cropping up.

To paraphrase a footballing cliché though, at the end of the day, it's all about the football, so we're willing to forgive the typos – we suspect that footie fans won't mind too much if 'Michael Owen' is spelt 'Michael Own'.

What is disappointing about this game (apart from the fact that the developer insists on using the terminology 'soccer', when it's clearly 'football') is that it's just so dull, so lifeless. Given the technical abilities of the current batch of mobile phones, it's a shame that none of that power hasn't been used to add media content to the questions.

For example, why couldn't video clips, sound files or even simple graphics been included to break up the monotonous questions and answers dynamic? Obviously such proposed content would bring in various licensing issues, and would not be suitable for all handsets, but it would make the game considerably more interesting. There's a reason why Chris Tarrant is used to present the WWTBAM shows, after all.